The present application relates to a child alarm apparatus comprising a timing mechanism for counting down an amount of time remaining in a pre-determined time interval before a pre-arranged response from a child is required. In particular, the apparatus includes a display to visually inform the child as to the amount of the time remaining and an alarm to alert the child when the time interval has expired.
Children often go outside their house to play, often in association with other children which frequently means the child will leave their own yard to play in a more communal area or at the house of a friend. During many of those times it is impractical or impossible for a parent or an adult to provide constant and continuous supervision. For example, a child may play outside while their parents are preparing a meal.
Due to the wanderings of a young mind and due to a lack of a more fully developed appreciation of certain responsibilities to and concerns of others, the expiration of the amount of time allotted for playing before reporting back to a particular parent or adult may pass unnoticed. Sometimes the child may even deliberately ignore such a reporting time because the child is enjoying playing or the like, later using the excuse that they did not realize what time it was. If the whereabouts of the child are not precisely known by the responsible parent or adult, anxiety may be generated which may subsequently be passed on to the child in a disciplinary form which the child may feel was unwarranted and/or the child may miss important events such as meal time.
Thus, a decided need exists for an apparatus which will provide a child with the ability to determine the amount of allotted playtime remaining and that the time has expired in such a manner that the child cannot ignore and which will, therefore, help the child develop a sense of responsibility to a supervising parent or adult. In so doing, anxieties of the parent or adult, which arise from untimely responsiveness of the child during unsupervised play intervals, will be minimized or eliminated.
It is also desirable to have such a device that cannot be readily tampered with by children trying to develop an alibi for not reporting when the alarm should sound and that is not easily removed by the child so they cannot make the excuse that the apparatus was misplaced or lost.